Jean Verville’s portrait-installations: IN 1 – All photos by Francois Bodlet courtesy of Jean Verville.
Canada – An architect’s nest, optical spaces for an eclectic couple and the golden abstraction of a maestro’s studio. Montreal based architect Jean Verville realized IN 1 2 3, three portrait-installations combining art, architecture and domesticity. The intimate spaces reflect the personalities of their occupants with intriguing photographic proposals.
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The IN 1 installation is nested into a metal wrapped two-level hangar erected at the end of Verville’s residence’s garden. “Like a Russian doll, the model slips into the silver shed to offer an architectural experience yet hiding another one.”
The interior is covered with panels made of pressurized wood chip. On the first floor a double height area features reconfigurable black tables, cabinets and chairs. “Through the kaleidoscopic texture of its compact pattern, a sole material eclipses the modular frame of the panels like the irregularities of the old hangar walls.”
A dropdown stair leads to an upper room. Here operable hatches can be opened up to fill the space with light. “This architectural installation offers a look at a personal universe that seems to turn on itself to lead to a parallel, shifted and secret world: my studio”.
IN 2 presents a domestic architectural installation designed for an eclectic couple. The 100 sqm cottage in Montreal combines wood, lacquer, paint, granite, ceramic tile and mirror highlighting a black and white contrast.
“The architectural intervention blurs the reading of spaces with volumetric assemblages and visual breakthroughs, contrasts and tensions, scale games and trompe-l’oeil.” The result is a optical apartment fusing art with everyday life and requiring a high degree of user participation.
The IN 3 installation abstracts a working space which highlighting excesses and exuberance while retaining assumed minimalism. The gray tones of the raw materials unite into a volumetric entity pierced by an immense golden structure deploying to abolish the hierarchy of spaces.
The project aims to satisfy the needs of everyday life, but also to subtract them from time to time in order to create a working environment that strengthens the maestro’s concentration. “The bare space conceals functions in a succession of sculptural volumes”.
IN 1 2 3 portrait-installations’ photography by François Bodlet – courtesy of Jean Verville.
